I'd been planning to discuss The End of Blackness by Debra Dickerson and thought the end of Black History Month an appropriate time to do it. But by the time I set out to write I realized whatever I write will only start out as a discussion of the book. I look at books like this on three levels: what is the point the author is trying to make, how well the author support the point, and is this point the one that should be made.
The Point
Viewing Dickerson's book through the lens of the "trailer" posted on her web site makes you come away with a different view than you do if your only forewarning of her intent is knowledge of her previous book. Here's a longish excerpt from her site, the parts that made in interested in the book emphasized:
Now that blacks are
free from whites (i.e. the societal understanding of them as the caste which
can be oppressed and exploited at will), The End of Blackness will argue that
its time for black people to free each other. Blacks can not effectuate
their collective will, unmediated by outsiders or insiders beholden to
outsiders, until they trust themselves and each other to effectuate their
individual wills.
Blacks must locate and embrace the selves they've not known since 1619. Only by
daring to live as autonomous individuals with voluntary group loyalty, only by
being brave enough to chart a course unconcerned with the existence of white
people, only by taking complete responsibility for their comportment and
decisions--only then will blacks be able to achieve collective goals, assess
collective penalties, award collective benefits, and jockey for socio-political
position like fully entitled citizens.
Til now, blacks have been social weaklings buffeted about and passively
informed of their reality (e.g. you may live here but not there, you may sit
there but not here on a city bus, you may protest in this way but not that way)
by the first class citizens, both their protectors and their enemies. It's time
for blacks to engender passivity in others, to inform outsiders of who blacks
are and what will and won't happen in black communities. Blacks must now
stop screaming at the top of their lungs and start speaking with quiet
authority; the authority of the fully entitled, the authority of the calmly
confident, the authority of the self-legitimized citizen who has no intention
of being silenced or marginalized ever again, but who, most importantly, does
not expect to be.
The first step in freeing each other is for black people, collectively, to
surrender, to consciously give up on achieving racial justice. Certainly, they
must renounce any notion of justice meant to even the historical score or to
bring about actual racial integration. The Civil War did not end with Lee's
surrender at Appomattox. Nor did it end with the passage of the 1964 Civil
Rights Act one hundred years later. It continues to this day. But that War over
the social and political position of black people must end and that end can
only come in the form of black surrender. What blacks must surrender is
the notion that they can be made whole for the centuries of loss and
degradation, that whites can be made to suffer guilt and shame equal to the
portion they dealt blacks, that America will ever see itself the way that its
blacks citizens do. America will never feel blacks' ambivalence for the
Founding Fathers, it will never waver from nostalgia for that much vaunted 'Age
of Innocence' that the black experience proves never existed. It can't. If it
did, it would have to come up with another, less glorious definition of itself
because that 'innocence' is that of the criminal whose victim lies mute, buried
in an unmarked grave and lost to history. Whites will never cringe with the shame
blacks feel appropriate; they will never welcome blacks freely into their
neighborhoods and schools. They must abandon the quest for whites'
respect, settling instead for their acceptance, however grudging, of the fact
that interference will be summarily dealt with (and not via bullhorn). Blacks
must cease clutching the unlocked fetters of humiliation and voluntary
outsiderness that hobble them to a view of the present shrink-wrapped to the
circumscribed past. Alas, they don't even have their faces pressed up against
the plate glass window of the future. They should be working towards a day when
segregation is turned on its head, when whites sue blacks for admittance to
black schools, black medical staffs, black businesses. Until then, blacks
will remain the annoying kid brother Mom forces you to tolerate.
This surrender must also acknowledge that blacks are Americans living in
a Euro centric culture, but one which could not have been built without them.
They should feel free to adopt Western culture, reject it, or meld it with some
desired level of Afro- (or other) centrism. But they should make that choice
aware of its consequences (and, of course, free of coercion from
goaltending Blacks and their apologists). In a recent book called a Hope in the
Unseen, a striving black youngster from the ghetto claws his way to Brown
University only to find that the Afrocentrism of his neighborhood education
left him knowing all the words to Lift Every Voice and Sing but clueless as to
who Churchill and Freud were. He was also sorely lacking in the academic
basics. That youngster had mainstream aspirations but was impeded by his
well-meaning black teachers in availing himself of that to which his
citizenship entitled him and for which he had worked so hard.
Blacks must accept that they are a numerical and political minority and must
master the dominant bodies of knowledge even as they fight for the inclusion of
worthy multicultural knowledge. As rational adults, they should concede
that, forced to choose, it should be Churchill over Patrice Lumumba, the Inchon
Landing over the Zulus' David vs Goliath victory over the British. Of course,
they shouldn't have to choose; the goal should be to expand the base of
cultural literacy, one sinew of a strong nation, not play a zero sum game in
which one nugget of western civilization must be jettisoned for every
multicultural nugget included. For the same reason that all schoolchildren need
to master algebra whether they think they'll ever use it or not, blacks must
master the Master's world. They needn't embrace it or even believe it; they
must simply render unto Caesar the things, which are Caesar's. And then subvert
it from within.
This black surrender is not defeat. It is not an admission that either the racists or the political conservatives were right all along. It is the mature acknowledgement that, right or wrong, the past is as rectified as its ever going to be, the future theirs to claim. Black surrender is both honorable and justified because it is offered as a response to whites' surrender of the right to exploit and oppress them or to appease those who do. In short, they've surrendered their right to a whiteness defined as control over non-whites, as a preordained spot at the top of every pile, from character, to intellect, to beauty, to talent.
In order to make future progress possible, blacks have to give up on the past. Tomorrow is their only option.
This is pretty strong stuff, and for the most part I approve. I immediately take exception to the chosen language in places…"surrender" is not an acceptable metaphor when a great number of the people such a statement needs to reach conceives of themselves as being at war…but overall I was inclined toward giving her book the benefit of the doubt.
Others, apparently, were not. Thulani Davis' review at the Village Voice gathers the opinion of several reviewers as well as parts of a telephone interview with Ms. Dickerson. I know this because I tracked down a fair number of reviews. I assigned races to each of the reviewers and damned if Ms. Davis' article didn't confirm my breakdown.
The Argument
The title of the book itself starts the discussion. It was
as popular among Black folks as this, from Race
Traitor, proved to be among white folks:
The key to solving the social problems of our age is to abolish the white race
…which is to say it fell on its face.
The opening section, I believe, is intended to say, "Okay, I acknowledge all the racism stuff," in the hope that it will get Black folks to read the prescriptive part. What has happened instead is white folks said, "I don't have to sit here and be insulted," while Black folks said, "You know all that and still…" The divide between Black and white opinions on this book is as stark as that on any other issue. For instance, Michael W. Robbins at Mother Jones says:
The End of Blackness is a solidly researched account of the evolution of black identity in America (her "prologue" is about as concise and direct an account of slavery and its long-standing effects as you are likely to find).
…while Gerald Early at the New York Times says:
The problem is that the author does not know enough, has not researched enough, to write an incisive book on African-American life or American racism. If one listens to a lot of black talk radio or has some bull sessions with other blacks, nearly every gripe and observation in ''The End of Blackness'' will be familiar. One does not write a book like this. One gets over it.
One thing on which all parties agree is the message the book sends: get over it. MOST reviews make note of the message and I see it myself, though because I approached the book with certain preconceived notions I can choose not to see it. That the message is near universally perceived is a good argument that it's in there, but it's an equally good argument that she hit either side of a universal nerve. Still, it doesn't seem very many people found her convincing. If the "coming attractions" article on her site accurately describes her intent then I have to say she puts it across much better in the various interviews I've seen laying around the net.
Making The Point
The End of Blackness isn't the first book to suggest Black people's strategies should assume the mainstream has gone as far as they will in attacking racism. Derek Bell's "Faces at the Bottom of the Well" is subtitled "The Permanence of Racism," and is filled with allegories that explore the repercussions of the idea (ask me about The Racial Preferences Licensing Act some day). I myself agree strongly about with several point in the preview quoted above. I just question how it's been said here. In the Village Voice article, she says:
Whites account for half of her e-mail, she said. "I hadn't thought about whether whites were trying to move beyond where they are. I thought they think the race issue is for black people. At first, I was sort of dismayed by all the e-mails, and said, 'Maybe it is just what white people want to hear.' "
If she honestly thought "the race issue is for black people," she is not the one to teach on racial issues.
Yet I've learned that the inability to put support a point doesn't necessarily mean the point is false.
Posted by P6 at February 29, 2004 12:15 AM
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Comments
MS DICKERSON: What blacks must surrender is the notion that they can be made whole for the centuries of loss and degradation, that whites can be made to suffer guilt and shame equal to the portion they dealt blacks, that America will ever see itself the way that its blacks citizens do.
This bewilders me: I've never encountered an African American who wanted these things, and I've met/read some awfully bitter ones. Certainly in the realm of public policy, I think nearly all understand that, if some succession of political and economic upheaval were to make whites suffer guilt and shame equal to the portion they dealt blacks, the result would be something like the Middle Ages (think 14th century in France). I don't even think Imamu Amiri Baraka wants that!
MS DICKERSON: The Civil War did not end with Lee's surrender at Appomattox. Nor did it end with the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act one hundred years later. It continues to this day. But that War over the social and political position of black people must end and that end can only come in the form of black surrender.
I jumped all over Ms. Dickerson when you first posted about her, and of course you objected to the concept of "black surrender."
P6: �surrender� is not an acceptable metaphor when a great number of the people such a statement needs to reach conceives of themselves as being at war�but overall I was inclined toward giving her book the benefit of the doubt.
I'll take this as read. After my oral exams I should address the economics of the Black community in a series of posts, but I'd like to fortify your remarks a bit.
First, I object to the careless use of the term "Civil War." It has a nice metaphorical feel to it--a deep, unresolved struggle, bloody (I commented here a while back about lynchings as a form of American terrorism), and polarizing. Alas, the metaphor only goes so far before it gets wrapped around a tree. The real Civil War was between two groups of white elites, and ended in some haste because the two were mutually dependent. African Americans were emancipated as a result, but the real test was urbanization, not combat: as in the rest of the world, the creation of a massive black beachhead in the cities of America was what prevented a wholesale return to de facto slavery. Similarly, even when African Amercan sharecroppers remained tied to the land, they still had access to modern urban institutions, albeit flawed and sometimes predatory.
The war metaphor, however, fails principally because a nation in a civil war is very different from one in which there is deep turmoil and acrimony. For one thing, all segments of the country are in submission to the polity. There may bitter acrimony between white Southern legislators and their esteemed colleagues from Northern states, but the business of state is accomplished nonetheless. Since all segments of society are in submission to the polity, the polity is obligated to weigh their interests. This came up in my debate with Mr. Hobsclaw over the Israel-Palestine dispute; the Palestinian intifada does not constitute a civil war since there does not exist a rival nation-state to the one in Tel Aviv. After the cessation of hostilities in a civil war, the victorious state is responsible for the defence of everyone's rights.
(In the case of the antebellum USA, the rights of the African American were not recognized; the rights of the slaveowner were. At the time of emancipation, the manumission of the slaves was regarded as a taking of the property of rebellious citizens--IOW, something justified only under conditions of war.)
I have used the term "war of state against nation" many times to describe social relations under fascism; civil society is here under assault by a regime which cannot operate within the framework of a coherent system of rights. Such a society may appear peaceful enough, but humans have no recourse against the whims or convenience of the state. In a falangist state, this warfare is selective; the state acknowledges some legal framework, but there will be elites who operate outside the law with impunity. The South, after Reconstruction, was such a society.
Among African Americans old enough to remember, the Civil Rights Movement had a drastic transformation; they have usually told me very emphatically that the change in status was dramatic and real. Those who cannot remember, or who have a narrowly economic view of the picture (e.g., Tony Brown) may scorn the intent and outcome of desegregation.
But those struggles were not in vain, and in a way, Ms. Dickerson seems to imply they were. While she might reject my imputation, I think African Americans have actually had better instincts and reflexes than either whites or affluent blacks give them credit for; as I've grown older I've been greatly humbled by this observation. What bothers me about the extracts is that she seems to feel the period 1865-1985 was a huge waste of time, a period in which the various epochs of legal struggle and cultural negritude were cycles in a long march to nowhere. But in reality, the African American, having been delineated into blackness, has been obligated to construct blackness as a singularly complex specimen of Western civilization.
Posted by James R MacLean at February 29, 2004 03:57 AM True the civil war was about elitism assertions. The industrial north vs. the gentile planters class of the south. Two different types of trade dominance.Proslavery states fought for the Union and engaged in slave trade of seized slaves in a re-sell market...many of these names from such states went on to 'carpetbagger' the south in the republican southern party, a legacy which is ignored by the republicans who use their party history as an attack on Democrats as party which panders to dependance.
That Lincoln went ahead with the proclamation was truly bold, and the great legacy to celebrate in light of other mistakes he made (habeaus corpus for example). Had he lived would reconstruction gone differently? Would the segregation and class stratification have continued? It is very possible had such occurred that the FDR four term Presidnecy would not have happened as Licoln would have probably gotten a third term under reconstruction.
The entire idea of the misery index being a measuring stick for repremands, and its false conclusion of justice is important to note. Think of this in Zen terms. The anger and energy is rechanneled and finds constructive focus.
The effort to make these feelings known in other fashion can lead to a notion of implied hostility for people who do not otherwise feel or see this viewpoint.So negative reinforcement against the desired goal can occur.Syntax on the receiving end of the communique formula, find the semantics or method to avoid this outcome.
The actual pyschological side affect of summoning this energy is also something whose side affects for the message sender can occur negativley. There is a primal scream/freudian release that must be addressed as well so the tightrope from expression to a reverse repression thought mode is something which must be acknowledged.
Instead , seeing a broader picture, one steps aside from the focus of narrowminded raicebaiting or hatred, even identifies in some level with such, and then uses agreement on one aspect to win control of the argument, change that person's mind and line of reason by gaining vote of confidence on one agreed term or thought.
In this way, understanding is won (as is trust) in some fundamental aspect. Otherwise the mindset is likely to fight , having expected one, and neither side gets past square one. Getting past the stand ground spot with movement is a great way to win over a mindset.
Am trying to come up with a specific example right now, such eludes me in this AM hour. However, the noting of Eurocentric and Afrocentric cultures is very interesting. Europe was itself a crossroads of conquest. Vikings and Huns and the crusades waning recess all met new forms of influence upon the anglo-saxon minsdset.
Their myth of homogenous pure culture is part of a notion that can be disarmed at start with those who are most ardent supporters of the mythology of Eurocentric ideals.
The best examples are from cultures in the Americas for how cultures merged. Take the native American model of assimiliation into account (the five civilized tribes or the Iroqouis league as examples). The wonderful Blues/Jazz culture of North America,as well.
As for education examples of heritage, ethic, examples, why not stress all of those things. Each point lends merit. There should be no need to set standards below that. What would be interesting is student dialogue after disclosure. Perhaps there will soon be some great blog-related classroom discussions.
Surrender can be appropriate, in the romantic context. Not giving up per se , but making one's self part of a greater a process. Lovemaking of sorts, in spiritual/intellectual terms.
Such is a term of seduction, not of defeat. The culture that has withstood the fire and tests of American history is still admired the world over and celebrated in many ways.
Unfortunately today's media has attempted to make this something to buy at wal-mart. Keeping this culture vibrant
Posted by Mr.Murder at February 29, 2004 05:49 AM